BOYS typically read less thoroughly than girls no matter what age they are, two of the biggest studies on reading have found.

The studies into the reading habits of children in the UK found young males take less time to process the words, skipping parts and also choosing books that are too easy for them.

Keith Topping, professor of educational and social research at the University of Dundee, is behind two large-scale academic research papers into the effects of literature.

Research showed high-achieving readers of both sexes are reading Jeff Kinney Titles include Diary of a Wimpy Kid most, followed b y second-most read David Walliams' titles including World’s Worst Children, and third JK Rowling's Harry Potter series.

It was also reported that during the first years of secondary school, children were reading difficult books with a high degree of success, such as the Harry Potter novels.

Mr Topping said: “The males were significantly worse on the outcome measures, didn’t gain as much in performance on reading tests and their average percentage correct in the tests was low.

He said the first study suggested boys of all ages tended to miss sections out of pages or skipped some completely when reading, a trait less pronounced in girls.

Mr Topping said of his second study: “But we looked at fiction and nonfiction reading and we found that, although it was true that boys tended to choose nonfiction more than girls, particularly at secondary level, they still didn’t read it better than girls.

"They were choosing nonfiction but they were not reading it as thoroughly and correctly as girls reading nonfiction.”

It was reported the data came from a tenth of the 8.4 million children in the UK.